Over the past two weeks, there have been a number of signs that
Myanmar's fragile reform process, first put on track about a year and a
half ago, is facing serious obstacles that, at times, have been papered
over. None of these problems alone should derail the reform process, and
they are not all exactly linked, but together they could prove
significant burdens.

The over-personalization of politics.
Shifting from an era when one man, Than Shwe, dominated the country, it
is not exactly surprising that politics in the reform period would be
highly personalized. Even among many highly educated Burmese working for
reformist think tanks and NGOs, I have heard arguments that the reform
process depends largely on the relationship between President Thein Sein
andNational League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu
Kyi. And indeed, their relationship is critical. But for the reform
process to really take flower, Myanmar needs institutions, and
politicians need to begin investing in institutions, so that reform is
not totally dependent on the relationship between two people. This past
week, Suu Kyi's speech to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Bangkok and
her hastily arranged trip to a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand seemed
to have angered the president's office, as Thein Sein abruptly canceled
his visit to the WEF and Suu Kyi was not allowed to speak with a
microphone at her refugee camp appearance. These events suggest that
friction is developing between the two paramount Burmese leaders, and
Suu Kyi's speech, which sounded a (reasonable) note of caution to investors,
seems to have further alienated the president's office. That might not
be such a big deal in another country, but in Myanmar, where these two
personalities dominate the reform effort, it's a problem.

The uncorking of the bottle. In such an
ethnically diverse country, and one in which certain ethnic groups have
long been discriminated against, the reform period seems to be
unleashing pent-up sentiments, with police and security forces now
unsure how to handle these problems --at times, they resort to their
cracked-heads thuggery of the past, while at other times they simply
seem to ignore simmering interethnic tensions. Case in point: This week anti-Muslim rioters
killed at least ten people in Arakan State, and the situation there
reportedly remains extremely tense. Is Myanmar prepared for the kind of
centrifugal tensions that often erupt with democratization? If it is
going to be, it will need far better trained, and far less brutal,
police.

The influx of outsiders. In just a short
few months since Western nations began relaxing sanctions or ending them
completely, Yangon and Naypyidaw have been swamped with potential
foreign investors, foreign academics and policy experts, foreign
diplomats, and NGOs. Many, indeed most, of these people are
well-meaning, and certainly Myanmar's long isolation means that it has
enormous needs in almost every area. But as Lex Rieffel
of the Brookings Institution has argued compellingly, the country is
poorly equipped to handle all this incoming money and advice. There is
the threat that a future government could, as in Hun Sen's Cambodia, use
all of the competing donors and investors and play them off of each
other to consolidate a new type of authoritarian rule. Or, as in many
emerging markets, the incoming donors and investors could soon dominate
the economy, causing inflation and creating an entire sector of the
economy just for catering to them.

This article originally appeared at CFR.org, an Atlantic partner site.